Though nothing remains visible on the surface today, historical maps tell the story of what once stood here. The 1839 Ordnance Survey six-inch map clearly shows a rectangular enclosure surrounded by a well-defined fosse, or defensive ditch, measuring approximately 65 metres northwest to southeast and 50 metres northeast to southwest.

By the time the 1938-39 edition of the Ordnance Survey was produced, the site had been reduced to an ordinary field, with the defensive earthworks either ploughed out or filled in over the intervening century. This transformation from defensive structure to agricultural land was common across Ireland as farming practices intensified and old fortifications lost their purpose. The site’s identification comes from the Archaeological Inventory of County Carlow, first published in 1993 by the Stationery Office in Dublin, with updates incorporating recent archaeological research as of July 2007.

Moated sites like this one were typically built by Anglo-Norman colonists and wealthy Irish families as defended farmsteads rather than true castles. They consisted of a raised platform surrounded by a water-filled moat, upon which stood a timber hall and various outbuildings. While Boherduff’s moated site has vanished from view, its ghostly outline preserved in old maps serves as a reminder of the medieval landscape that once shaped this part of Carlow, where defence and agriculture went hand in hand.